There isn’t much that bothers a fish the size of a white sturgeon, but tops on that short list is a charge of explosives going off in its immediate vicinity. When that happens, they have a tendency to float belly up to the surface. And there were enough explosive charges going off on the Columbia River and its tributaries in the course of a half century to nearly blow the stocks to oblivion. Big sturgeon—prime breeders, for the most part weighing hundreds of pounds and capable of producing close to a million eggs each—floated to the surface and washed ashore in alarming numbers.

The dams built during the 50-year frenzy to harness the hydro electric potential of the 2,000 kilometre Columbia and its tributaries also had an indirect impact on Columbia sturgeon, fracturing their habitat, blocking their migrations up and down the system and, in many cases, barring access to spawning grounds and nursery areas. Not only was the population of adult fish decimated, but there were also far too few young fish in the upper basin to rebuild or even hold the population for the future. With fewer than 1,000 adult fish in the Canadian portion of the river, the white sturgeon of the Columbia’s upper basin was designated in 2006 as an endangered population destined to die out within the lifetime of most people living along its banks. But poke around in the calm and shallow back bays near the West Kootenays town of Trail of late and you’re liable to encounter these endangered relics from the age of dinosaurs in surprising numbers. Granted, these fish aren’t quite in the same size as the big adults, but they are sturgeon, they are plentiful and, if participants in the Upper Columbia White Sturgeon Recovery Initiative have their way, these foot-and-a-half-long, perfect miniatures, likely survivors of a release of hatchery-reared juveniles at Beaver Creek in Trail several years ago, will become cornerstones in the return of the Upper Columbia white sturgeon population. The cross-border organization, also known by the equally tongue twisting acronym UCWSRI, has been releasing juvenile sturgeon in the Columbia since 2001 when somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 fish the size of your hand were released at several sites including the base of the Hugh Keenleyside Dam near Castlegar and Beaver Creek. These days the annual releases are more modest, numbering between 2,000 and 3,000 juveniles but the success ratio, initially pegged at about 10 per cent, appears to be three times that. It bodes well for the upper Columbia’s white sturgeon populations by the middle of the current century, but what about the fish between now and then? The presence of a few wild juveniles—recognizable by the absence of identifying marks on their scutes or armour plating—represent half a percentage of the age class in the river. That’s good new and bad. It means the adult females are still producing young rather than absorbing the roe for lack of essential spawning habitat or required water temperatures. And some of the eggs are evolving into free swimming youngsters. On the other hand, there’s the question of why the wild juveniles make up such a skimpy proportion of the total population of immatures. “If these prehistoric fish are to survive long-term, we need to understand why younger age classes are not surviving to adulthood,” said James Crossman, sturgeon biologist for BCHydro, one of the partners in the UCWSRI. The key to that mystery may have something to do with water temperature and quality, but with the overall population of white sturgeon in Canada’s portion of the Columbia River numbering upwards of 10,000 fish, young and old, their immediate survival, if not explosive, appears to be rock solid.